Kventin
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I can. Of all the secondary skills, only two allow you to obtain troops from the air: Necromancy and Diplomacy. Diplomacy has the greatest impact on the game. One good join can turn the game upside down. This is precisely why it is almost impossible to make Diplomacy a moderately viable skill. Diplomacy will either be overpowered or useless. All the restrictions on its value are just half-measures; it is almost impossible to find a balance in this case.
Okay, explain to me how it can be overpowered on XL, with a limit of 10,000, equivalent to 7 ducks, what army can you assemble, even with control, with such small stacks?
In my opinion, it is obvious that it will not be overpowered.
Therefore, if the current limit of 25,000 turns out to be overpowered, then you can simply change the limit to 16,000, and with a high degree of probability, we will be close to the local optimum, since a step of 3,000 is not particularly significant.
The issue here is not that, but the attempt to add something unnecessary. I repeat, I can come up with ways to enhance Navigation, Scouting, Tactics, Earth Magic, and even Wisdom. BUT it's not needed! It's like giving new properties to units. What's wrong with air elementals being able to fly? Seemingly nothing, but why?:confused:
Let's look at the changes made:
1. Diplomacy – the inclusion of a native mechanic that was disabled due to imbalance.
2. Eagle Eye – the inclusion of a native skill mechanic that is currently hardly used.
3. First Aid – enhances an interesting native mechanic that is not used very often.
Therefore, only point 3 can be attributed to "whimsy," but firstly, it is done to balance the native mechanic and the Inferno Castle, and secondly, assess the scale of the change.
Of all the possible skill changes, only these 3 passed the filter.
Added 4 minutes ago
In general, here are some suggestions. If it is difficult to work on the generator for now (yes, I understand why), then you can fix Necromancy, but not by castration, as in HotA, but by nerfing the Necromancer Castle. Specifically:
1. Make Tanta like Alamar with Jeddite – eternal resurrection of skeletons only with advanced Earth Magic. I think it's not difficult.
2. Fix the Converter. Make the conversion of low-level units proportional to their health, and not 1 to 1 as it is now. That is, 6 peasants -> 1 skeleton. But, as before, 1 Kent -> 1 skeleton.
Under this, you can increase the number of goblins and imps at the start in Barbarians and Inferno. This will strengthen them, and the conversion will be approximately as before.
And secondly. There is a mechanic in the Heroes game that, due to the law of large numbers, large stacks are very likely to have approximately the average damage value. That is, a conditional Clavius enters a 1-unit garrison, and his stack of skeletons deals 125-375 damage. And instead of thinking tactically, he realizes that he will, on average, deal 250 damage and hastes the skeletons and one-shots the stacks. Who abuses this? The strongest castles – Necropolis, Dungeon, and Conflux (2-8 spread for air units). By making the damage distribution uniform, you can subtly weaken them without significantly changing the game mechanics (and spoiling "what the old men have long known, but shouldn't have been abusing").
In general, I'm offering some ideas.
Regarding point 1, there is a similar idea, if, of course, we are talking about the fact that skeletons raised by the "Raise Dead" spell remain after the battle only with advanced/expert Earth Magic.
Regarding the Converter and damage, in my opinion, the changes will not be worth the resulting effect.
Added 8 minutes ago
I think, for starters, we should thank Kventin and other modders for their work. But, unfortunately, the effect of such plugins will tend towards zero as long as SoD has a morally outdated and buggy generator. Without reworking the generator, SoD is doomed for online play. In a year or two, only a dozen or so HotA haters, plus a couple of tournaments a year for nostalgia, will play it. All these reworkings of Eagle Eye and First Aid will be worth nothing as long as, in 6lm, in 30% of the generations, blue will have a one-way road. If you care so much about SoD, then only reworking the generator can give it a new life.
On JC, it is clear that:
There is no function that builds a road from point A to point B.
There is a function that connects point A to the existing road network.
On the first call, it connects the starting castle of red to the starting castle of blue.
Then, the connection of each city to each is checked, and if there is no connection, a road is built to the nearest road network.
That is, the frequently encountered "isolated village" spawn is formally not a bug; the algorithm "honestly" builds a road along the shortest path, and it turns out to be the road network of the center, and not the starting castle of the spawn.